This chapter applies an integrated approach to decision-making and cultural evolution to explore some of the characteristics that influence population-level differences in innovativeness and to understand how such differences emerge. In laying the foundation for subsequent arguments I begin by summarizing research showing how evolutionary theory can direct and inform our understanding of decisi...

A fundamental weakness of current research on corporate innovation communities is that knowledge about how to alter them for innovation endeavors remains vague. To help facilitate this gap, we analyze the influence of organizational contexts on innovation activities and outcomes from a contingency theory perspective. From the analysis of multiple in-depth case studies, four types of organizatio...

The Water Cube National Swimming Centre designed for the 2008 Beijing Olympics has been hailed as a highly innovative post-millennial sports facility. Conceptually, its architecture is a cube, carved from a random, organic and homogeneous cluster of foam bubbles. Structurally, it is a mathematically rigorous steel space frame, primarily of pentagonal and hexagonal cells. Materially, it is clad ...

Creativity and innovation are central to cultural production, but what makes certain producers more likely to innovate than others? We revisit the concept of embeddedness to evaluate how different dimensions of social structure affect the production of novelty in music. Using original data on over 10,000 unique artists and 115,000 songs recorded and released between 1960 and 1995, we estimate h...

For 3 1/2 years an occupational therapist persevered in efforts to introduce an innovative outpatient service of multidisciplinary team case management within a general community hospital. The service was intended to meet the needs of discharged clients with severe mental illnesses who were attempting to live successfully and satisfactorily in the community. The reality of attempting to initiat...

This theme issue explores how and why behavioural innovation occurs, and the consequences of innovation for individuals, groups and populations. A vast literature on human innovation exists, from the development of problem-solving in children, to the evolution of technology, to the cultural systems supporting innovation. A more recent development is a growing literature on animal innovation, wh...